Kilkenny farm leader joins EU Mercosur protest

ICMSA President, Kilkenny’s Denis Drennan, attended this week’s protest in Brussels against the Mercosur Agreement.
The protest was organised at short notice by a wide spectrum of farm organisations, trade unions, civil society groups and environmental activists all united in their opposition to what Mr Drennan has called a ‘calculated betrayal of the EU’s decades long policy of sustainability and low-environmental impact’.

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Mr Drennan was part of the European Milk Board contingent that was headed by the President of the specialist dairy farmer umbrella group, Kjartan Poulsen, who previously travelled from Denmark to address the ICMSA National Council on precisely the issues that the move to ratify the Mercosur Agreement will now bring centre stage.

Mr Drennan said that it was ‘simply impossible’ for the Irish Government to pretend that this could be yet another situation where Ireland was expected to ‘take one for the team’ .

Nor was it, he maintained, a question of losing on our food exports but gaining in other areas.

“It’s already obvious what’s going on here; Germany wants to sell cars to the South American market and Spain wants radically increase trade with the South American countries with whom it has strong linguistic, historical and commercial links. But the only thing that Mercosur can export to us is beef and other foodstuffs and the beef, specifically, will be in direct competition with us for markets we’ve spent decades opening.

“The competition isn’t the problem; our beef is better and on any level playing field there wouldn’t be any problem. The problem arises because there isn’t any pretence of a ’level playing field’; the South American beef is produced practically without regulation or even a semblance of sustainability and that means that it will be arriving cheaper and undercutting our beef that’s produced to the standards that the EU itself has insisted upon,” said Mr Drennan.

Mr Drennan said that France was assembling a blocking vote and the Irish Government must not listen to the ‘sirens’ voices’ who imagined that we could gain more than we would lose.

“Ireland’s national interest lies in a categoric rejection of a Mercosur Agreement, something that has been recognised by successive Irish Governments for 20-odd years,” concluded Mr Drennan.